A cast iron soil stack pipe fell from a house being worked on by building company Sage Homes, with the six-year-old victim surviving the ordeal but suffering serious injuries including a fractured skull and neck.<\/p>\n
Director Jason Scorey previously pleaded not guilty to breaking health and safety regulations.<\/p>\n
Southampton Crown Court<\/p>\n
The company, based at Solent Business Centre on Millbrook Road West, also pleaded not guilty to failing to discharge its general health, safety and welfare duty.<\/p>\n
The jury returned guilty verdicts for both counts today (Monday), after Judge Nigel Peters KC earlier agreed he would accept majority verdicts.<\/p>\n
During the trial, which began last week, the court heard it had taken two men to lift the pipe off the boy.<\/p>\n
Health and Safety Inspector Alexander Ashen, who investigated the incident, told the jury the pipe could have been \u201cat least 100 years old\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pointing to the pipe, which was displayed in court, he added: \u201cYou can see how corroded and old it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The inspector said the brackets and nails which held it to the house were also in the same condition.<\/p>\n
The husband of the boy\u2019s mother, who had also seen the pipe fall as he waited to pick up the pair on School Road, said in a statement he had heard a workman at the scene say to another one: \u201cWe should have tied it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scorey said the incident had “rocked him to his core” but he also believed it was “unforeseeable” and he had no reason to think the pipe was a danger.<\/p>\n
Fellow director at Sage Homes, Philip Hennessey, later arrived at the scene, calling the incident \u201ca freak accident\u201d, the court heard.<\/p>\n
Sentencing will take place at the court on 12th September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A BUILDER has been found guilty of breaching health and safety rules after a large metal pipe fell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,30,393,4884,609,257,115658,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-318310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-human-interest","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-totton","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114972992714325000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}